26

patrons

$66

per month

Hi, I'm Alexandre Prokoudine and I'm a journalist specializing on free-as-in-speech software for creative professionals. In 2009, I launched Libre Graphics World (LGW) to deliver news on free software to a diverse group of users: photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, prepress engineers etc. Over the years the scope of the project got larger: video and audio editing, computer-aided drafting, 3D printing etc.

Now I'm using Patreon to fund my work on this online magazine and expand it, so that more people would get involved with writing in-depth articles and tutorials.

The website regularly features large above-the-fold banners for ongoing crowdfunding campaigns by projects like Krita, Blender, MuseScore/OpenScore and others, completely free of charge for the projects (hit me up, if you have an interesting campaign).

In a nutshell, I've been operating Libre Graphics World on the principle that users deserve responsible, insightful coverage of events that matter to them.

SO WHAT'S THE PLAN WITH PATREON?

Running Libre Graphics World as a one-man show in spare time is not sustainable at all. Moreover, while I'm generally good at covering a diversity of topics as a journalist and tinkerer, I'll never be a professional architect or an amazing VFX artist. Hence I'd rather be paying to people with lots of hands-on experience.

Over the past few years, I privately talked to some prominent figures in the community like David Revoy, Pat David, and Guillermo Espertino about how this project could be funded. Basically, we all agreed that introducing a paywall would be a complete and utter disaster.

So I'm using Patreon instead. Step 1 is getting me to a point where I can give this project my full attention, and step 2 is getting more people involved.

There's also step 0.5 or maybe 1.5: redesigning and rebranding LGW. The project stopped being about just the graphics about 6 months into its existence. The name change has been long overdue, and I have just the domain name to honor the whole diversity of topics. The current CMS has to be done away with as well.

Oh, and one last thing. Since 2011, I've been using AdSense to monetize the magazine. The income covered technical bills like the annual domain name update and web hosting. I mostly spent the residual for recurring donations — Ardour, Blender Foundation, the past Synfig Studio campaigns at Indiegogo, David Revoy's Patreon etc.

Now that my Patreon campaign is live, I pulled the ads altogether. However, I expect to continue supporting all these projects, and — with your help — increase my donations. I'm keeping the door open for sensible ads from vendors who are friendly to the free software community though. And the banners for interesting FOSS crowdfunding campaigns go free, same as usual.

Tiers

Supporter

$1 or more per month ∙ 14 patrons

Thanks a lot! I treasure every bit of your trust in this project. If you have idea how to improve Libre Graphics World, please tweet to @lgworld.

Goals

Hi, I'm Alexandre Prokoudine and I'm a journalist specializing on free-as-in-speech software for creative professionals. In 2009, I launched Libre Graphics World (LGW) to deliver news on free software to a diverse group of users: photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, prepress engineers etc. Over the years the scope of the project got larger: video and audio editing, computer-aided drafting, 3D printing etc.

Now I'm using Patreon to fund my work on this online magazine and expand it, so that more people would get involved with writing in-depth articles and tutorials.

The website regularly features large above-the-fold banners for ongoing crowdfunding campaigns by projects like Krita, Blender, MuseScore/OpenScore and others, completely free of charge for the projects (hit me up, if you have an interesting campaign).

In a nutshell, I've been operating Libre Graphics World on the principle that users deserve responsible, insightful coverage of events that matter to them.

SO WHAT'S THE PLAN WITH PATREON?

Running Libre Graphics World as a one-man show in spare time is not sustainable at all. Moreover, while I'm generally good at covering a diversity of topics as a journalist and tinkerer, I'll never be a professional architect or an amazing VFX artist. Hence I'd rather be paying to people with lots of hands-on experience.

Over the past few years, I privately talked to some prominent figures in the community like David Revoy, Pat David, and Guillermo Espertino about how this project could be funded. Basically, we all agreed that introducing a paywall would be a complete and utter disaster.

So I'm using Patreon instead. Step 1 is getting me to a point where I can give this project my full attention, and step 2 is getting more people involved.

There's also step 0.5 or maybe 1.5: redesigning and rebranding LGW. The project stopped being about just the graphics about 6 months into its existence. The name change has been long overdue, and I have just the domain name to honor the whole diversity of topics. The current CMS has to be done away with as well.

Oh, and one last thing. Since 2011, I've been using AdSense to monetize the magazine. The income covered technical bills like the annual domain name update and web hosting. I mostly spent the residual for recurring donations — Ardour, Blender Foundation, the past Synfig Studio campaigns at Indiegogo, David Revoy's Patreon etc.

Now that my Patreon campaign is live, I pulled the ads altogether. However, I expect to continue supporting all these projects, and — with your help — increase my donations. I'm keeping the door open for sensible ads from vendors who are friendly to the free software community though. And the banners for interesting FOSS crowdfunding campaigns go free, same as usual.

Recent posts by Alexandre Prokoudine

Tiers

Supporter

$1 or more per month ∙ 14 patrons

Thanks a lot! I treasure every bit of your trust in this project. If you have idea how to improve Libre Graphics World, please tweet to @lgworld.